In the episode Hiawatha and Megissogwon, the hero Hiawatha, sun of the West Wind, is grown to manhood-a powerful figure, righting wrongs and vanquishing demons. Inspired by his grandmother, Nokomis, he travels into a desolate land to challenge an evil magician. What follows is dramatic and packed with action, as Hiawatha slays serpents, evades ghosts, and finally confronts the mighty Megissogwon. Jeffrey Thompson's evocative scratchboard and computer colour illustrations combine with Longfellow's stirring poetry to create a stunning picturebook that will capture the readers' imaginations.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In Hiawatha and Megissogwon an excerpt from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1853) illustrator Jeffrey Thompson's combination of scratchboard and computer-generated illustrations appeals to a modern sensibility while preserving the historical flavor. Joseph Bruchac puts Longfellow's poem in the context of its time and clarifies some misleading details in the poem.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 4-8-How Hiawatha slew serpents and traversed deadly, black-pitch waters to vanquish the evil magician Megissogwon is told in the "Pearl-Feather" section of "The Song of Hiawatha." Longfellow's words provide the text for a powerful and engrossing picture-book version of the story. Readers who persevere through the no-longer-familiar poem will be rewarded for their efforts by Hiawatha's exciting adventures, ferocious battles, and victorious homecoming. The text has been capably illustrated in a complex process utilizing original drawings, black-and-white scratchboard, and a computer program for color. The result is uniquely suggestive at once of traditional woodblock prints and contemporary computer processes. Colors are deep and vivid. A pattern of multiple frames, irregularly split frames, and double-page spreads effectively heightens the drama of the story. In the back matter, an author's comment provides the details of source material for the patterns and images, including original craftwork of the Ojibway/Chippewa peoples and artifacts on display at the Smithsonian Institution. In an afterword, Joseph Bruchac comments on the authenticity of Hiawatha as a Native American story. He also credits Longfellow's respect for his material and provides background on the poet's original sources. While pointing out the mistakes Longfellow made (including confusing the historic figure of Hiawatha with the Anishinabe trickster Manabozho), Bruchac's balanced comments also pay tribute to this classic poem as the first step in bringing Native American cultures into the national consciousness. This book deserves a place in both the literature and history classrooms.
Dorian Chong, School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University, CA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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